Inarguably India’s biggest sensation in athletics, Neeraj Chopra arrived in Turku, Finland on Sunday to start his comeback campaign after almost a year away, following his gold medal-winning triumph at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
Neeraj's event gets underway at 10:30pm IST on Tuesday night.
The Paavo Nurmi Games' official Instagram handle announced his arrival via a post.
In his very first tournament back, Neeraj will lock horns with some of the best javelin throwers in the business. World Champion Anderson Peters, Tokyo Olympics silver medalist Jakub Vadlejch and world No 3 Julian Weber are all competing at the event.
Johannes Vetter, the man with the most 90+ throws among the current competitors, has opted out of the competition. Vetter had gone into the Tokyo Olympics as the gold medal favourite, on the back of his record streak of throwing beyond 90m in seven competitions in 2021. However, the he was eliminated in the qualification round itself after managing a best throw of 82.52m.
The showpiece Paavo Nurmi Games is Finland’s leading track and field competition, conducted annually since 1957. It’s a Continental Tour Gold meet, a top-flight World Athletics contest. The competition has got its name from Paavo Nurmi, a Finnish middle-distance and long-distance runner, famously called the Flying Finn. He bagged nine gold medals and three silvers at the Olympics between 1920 and 1928.
During the first of 13 Diamond League meetings of 2022, Chopra’s contemporaries Anderson Peters of Grenada and Jakub Vadlejch of the Czech Republic achieved staggering figures, both smashing the 90m plus mark.
At the Doha event in May, Peters claimed the gold medal in his sixth attempt, launching his javelin to a whopping distance of 93.07m. Meanwhile, Vadlejch grabbed the silver medal with a throw of 90.88m in his fifth attempt.
Neeraj clinched a gold medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, hurling his javelin to a distance of 87.58m. However, his personal best of 88.07m was achieved at the 2021 Indian Grand Prix in 2021.
In an interview with The Quint, the 24-year-old expressed his wish to breach the 90m mark this year, but he’s unfazed by his peers’ performances and wanted to take things slowly post his recovery from illness.
"That is my target for this year, but I'm not focusing on getting it at the very beginning. Yes, I will give my best in every competition, but who's to say if everything will go well on each day? A lot depends on the weather and the conditions, so let's see when I get a good result," Neeraj told The Quint.
The Indian athlete is also eyeing the lofty Diamond League meeting in Stockholm on June 30 before flying to the USA for the World Championships, starting July 15.
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